This soup is very easy to make. You can soak beans overnight or just used any canned/jarred white beans. Find every vegetable scrap in your fridge from old onions slices to wilted bok choy to rubbery carrots to a stump of brown fennel. All should go in. All will taste good. This is the template.

In your soup pot, fry up the bacon until crisp. Remove bacon and place on paper towel. Pour out all but 1 tablespoon of bacon fat. Add olive oil. Over medium heat, add onions, carrots, and celery. Add big pinch of salt. Cook until tender (about 10 minutes).

While the vegetables are cooking, make a puree out of anchovies and garlic (with mortar and pestle or a chef knife on a cutting board). Add puree to vegetables. Cook over medium heat for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add white wine. Cook down for a minute. Add potatoes and turnips. Add enough stock and/or water so that the vegetables are covered. Throw in a parmesan rind. Bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Add white beans and cook for another 20 minutes with the lid off. You want the potatoes, turnips, and beans to start to fall apart and thicken the soup.

Fry up the sausage in a separate pan until almost cooked through. Slice and add to the soup.

Stack all the kale leaves. Slice into 1"pieces. Add to soup. Cover with lid for two minutes until kale is wilted.

I would read this blog greedily if it had no recipes at all. The fact that the recipes are (almost) as intriguing and satisfying as the writing is...incredible. I look forward to re-reading your post when I cook this!

Inspired by "The Counter Where You Cook" on FB to make this soup today. Just finished. It's cooling on the stove for reheating at dinner. Will let you know how it turned out—some of my proportions seemed off and my soup pot was too small but when I tasted it to season it tasted good! And it's my first time ever cooking with an anchovy! Or willingly putting an anchovy in/on something. But after reading about you bashing them and umami-adding them for so long, I figured it was time to make the anchovy leap!

oh, jen. love that you made this soup. please do let me know how it all worked out. what do you mean about the proportions? and perhaps i need to buy you a soup pot for your birthday. happy fucking holidays and all of that. xoxo

P, I think I totally need a bigger new soup pot. I think my two biggest pots are 8 quarts each—almost always good for a single soup recipe, but doesn't work for the soup I like to make in double batches. I do think that for however I did it, there were too many potatoes (and I left out three)—they went totally to the top of the pot above the carrot-celery base. I couldn't find white turnips (which I googled at WF, and saw they look like small beets in scale), so I bought two purple and only used one. By the proportions I meant that the potatoes and turnips overflowed and I couldn't get them all in, and it seemed like there were too many for however I was doing it, and it also seemed like a lot for the amount of white beans. But that is all BESIDE THE POINT because it was FUCKING DELICIOUS. Unanimously agreed by Adam, visiting college friend Gregg, me, and I'm sure Paco if I'd let him have any. I wish I had gotten different sausage, but WF was all "apple-chicken-smoked" bullshit. It would have been tastier to have something that really got crispy and carbonized on the outside. The bacon fat added great flavor but then I wasn't as big a fan of sprinkling the bacon on (which is rare, because what isn't improved by real bacon bits?). And I am an anchovy convert—for the moment, however, I think I may require that they be baked into the thing, not visible or smellable. I have plenty left over and last night could already tell it would just get better and better. I don't think, however, that I would characterize this as "easy to make" because it has so much prep at various points and things to cook independently of one another. No special skills called for, but lots of steps and took a couple hours. Then again, your mad skillz probably make short work of that. MOTHERFUCKING DELICIOUS. Thank you.

i just measure my yellow soup pot. it's 24 cups up to the top. i don't think you're tuber-challenged. i still think i need to buy you a bigger soup pot. so glad you made the soup. you willing to test a few more recipes this spring? xoxo

Two things: one, I am getting a new soup pot, perhaps my very first (long desired) Le Creuset, definitely in yellow because it looks so damn cool on your stove; and two, I am your ready, willing, and eager servant in testing all recipes from an amateur's POV and being my usual loquacious self with feedback. Oh, and three, you and your 24 cups fucking rock.

yay to all of this. and yes. le creuset pots are genius. my yellow one is a hand-me-down from my parents. i have one that i won from that whole julie/julia contest that actually brought about my blog (i told you, right?). It's 3 times the size of my yellow one. 72 fucking cups. about to fill it with cassoulet for bella's 11th, matthew's 47th, dad's 70th. a whole mess of capricorns. it's a 5 day project.

WOW! You are a cassoulet superstar. 72 cups—one day I will get there! A five-day cooking project. Amazing. Also interesting to see the generational age spreads—11, 47, 70. We are living lives, that's for sure.

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About Me

Phyllis worked in pastry at New York City's Bouley, Michael's, and Nobu. She tired quickly of sugar and burning her forearms and never sleeping. Fifteen years later she started "Dash and Bella," named after her son (6) and her daughter (11). With a focus on cooking with and for children, her blog includes photos, step-by-step instructions, food preparation tips, and her own recipes for cooking delicious, seasonal, and healthful meals. She doesn't believe in "kid food," doesn't oversimplify, and involves her kids in every step of the cooking process.